Born in Noranda, Quebec, Dorris Heffron has an Honours
B.A.(1967),and M.A.(1969) in Literature and Philosophy from Queen's
University, Canada. Heffron lived in Oxford, England from 1968-1980 where
she was a tutor for Oxford University and The Open University, giving
courses in Literature. While there, she wrote three novels about teenagers,
published by Macmillan, London. Internationally acclaimed, they are regarded
as pioneers in the genre of young adult fiction. They were translated and
put on highschool courses in Europe, Japan and Canada. During
sabbaticals, she taught creative writing at the University of Malaysia and
resided while writing and teaching, in Holland, France and Cape Breton
Island. Heffron returned to Toronto in 1980.

She has served on the National Council of The Writers' Union, the Board
of Directors of PEN Canada, The Writers Trust of Canada, the Toronto Arts
Council and the Board of Directors of the Native Men's Residence. She has
been a library writer-in-residence and book reviewer for the Globe and Mail

Heffron's first adult's novel, the popular, A Shark in the
House is about a woman dentist in Toronto who reluctantly
finds herself involved in the aboriginal standoff at Oka. Told with humour
and compassion, it is a story of love and striving, death and survival, of
people on both sides of the barricades.

Heffron's new novel, City Wolves is the story
of Canada's first woman veterinarian who becomes the notorious 'Dog Doctor
of Halifax' in the 1890s and winds up in the Klondike gold rush tending sled
dogs. At the heart of the novel is the ancient story of how wolves became
sled dogs. Uniquely Canadian and profoundly universal, City
Wolves subtly reveals the human nature of wolves
and the wolf-life nature of humans.

Dorris Heffron lives on a property called Little Creek Wolf Range, two hours
north of Toronto, Canada.

It was a grand experience and privilege
to be head of Canada’s national organization of professionally published
book writers, especially in the year that our founding member, Alice Munro
won the Nobel Prize for Literature! I had the honour of signing and
presenting to her a Life Membership in The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC).
For highlights of my year as Chair of TWUC please read my final
report for TWUC'sWRITE magazine. It’s in my blog on this website.

In September 2014, I was invited to
Fort McMurray, city of the oil sands in northern Alberta, by Lisa
Schaldemose, an environmentalist who lives and works there. I did gigs for
City Wolves and research for a
kind of sequel to it. Thanks to Lisa’s friend, a First Nations
entrepreneur, I was flown over the oil sands in his private plane.
Privileged sights and insights, for sure!
They are the catalyst for the new novel I’m working on. It’s title is Bear With Me .
I will not be blogging or adding much to my website until the novel is
finished. Bear with me, please!

Entrepreneur David Boucher, flew me and Lisa over the oils sands of Fort
McMurray in one of his airplanes.